I see the complainers are for the most part not full time shooters, just hobbyists.

I dont think that you can "kill" a discussion or a line of thought by claiming that everyone having a viewpoint different from yours are hobbyists, amateurs, or don't know how to use their cameras. I think it is good for you that you are satisfied with your tools.

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Because most every 5DIII owner I know personally or have read comments from unanimously feel that the 5DIII is a fantastic money making workhorse. And non of that has anything to do with DXO or dynamic range, blah blah blah.

Is the question how to make the most money? Then I believe that photography is generally a bad choice no matter what?

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The 5DIII is overpriced, not way around it. But since shooting with it over my previous 5DII, the higher number of tack sharp frames with AF has increased.

I dont think that anyone dispute that the mk3 is an improvement over the mk2.

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The bickering here is just a waste of time. Buy what you can afford, can use, and can make the best of. Tech will always improve, obviously.

But why buy anything less than the best you can afford? I dont get your logic. _If_ the D800 is a somewhat "better" camera than the 5Dmk3 for a given photographer, why should he go for the 5D? So rather than throwing arguments about how much better Canon are than they were 4 years ago, or how much better they are than their customers, or how much money you can make from a 5Dmk3, I think it would make more sense for you to argue why Canon is a better camera than similar or cheaper products from competitors.

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The irony is how many "photographers" complain about cameras, the companies and the such. I wish the camera companies would come along and say, "You know guys, we make damn good cameras, in fact we make cameras far better and with more features than you photographers can make good photographs."

I am an amateur. Sometimes I do not get exposure just right. Sometimes I do not get AF just right. (I often do not get the scene like I had envisioned or hoped.) If Canon or Nikon are able to help me make a larger percentage of my images salvagable, why should my money be any less worth than yours?

But why buy anything less than the best you can afford? I dont get your logic. _If_ the D800 is a somewhat "better" camera than the 5Dmk3 for a given photographer, why should he go for the 5D? So rather than throwing arguments about how much better Canon are than they were 4 years ago, or how much better they are than their customers, or how much money you can make from a 5Dmk3, I think it would make more sense for you to argue why Canon is a better camera than similar or cheaper products from competitors.-h

I agree that at the moment D800 is the best, however Your point about to get the best body in market is ridiculous. If after some time canon will make better camera then You should switch back...

What i like is that the competition is getting stronger and canon cant no longer rest on its achievements in past....

...however Your point about to get the best body in market is ridiculous. If after some time canon will make better camera then You should switch back...

Of course no-one should shift system every 6 months.

Please read my post as if I took that point for granted, or left it out to avoid bloat.

As a Canon owner I hope and believe that there will be other reasons to stay with the brand than existing investement in the future. The quality of raw files is important to me, but I am occasionally frustrated at how little emphasis manufacturers seem to put into it. (no doubt they put "many" people into that departement, but it seems to me that they could redirect even more resources from "toy-like" features). Of course, I am argueing from my own personal needs, they probably know their core US and Japan buyers better than I do...

During the past 30 years I have changed systems 4 times: Canon - Nikon - Olympus - Minolta - Canon digital (2002). During the digital era I am on my third set of bodies, but still using mostly the same lenses. For me the advances Nikon has made with D800 and D4 is big enough reason to switch to those bodies as the lenses also are in the need of replacement and Nikon is now making better glass also. After 10 years I will be retired and I already have my retirement camera, X-Pri1...

I mean no offense, but the only people I really want to talk about photography and cameras with are those people who shoot day in day out for clients and have to work on deadlines, work with subjects, maintain computers and gear so everything works all the time. Anything less is a hobby and as such is not as important...

No offense as well, but that makes as much sense as saying that the only people you really want to talk about sex are prostitutes

I mean no offense, but the only people I really want to talk about photography and cameras with are...

When posting on a public forum like this, professionals and non-professionals may reply.

You come out as someone eager to defend your own choices. That happens to professionals as well as amateurs, we have all been there. I think that a good "cure" for that is to steer the discussion towards facts and objective truths, not "who gets to speak".

I mean no offense, but the only people I really want to talk about photography and cameras with are those people who shoot day in day out for clients and have to work on deadlines, work with subjects, maintain computers and gear so everything works all the time. Anything less is a hobby and as such is not as important.

Go hang out in the "pro business" forum!

For the record, you've got it all upside ... who wants to sit around and talk about 'work' with other people from 'work'?

'Work' is not important ... 'hobbies' are. Work is just what you do so you can afford your hobby ... duh.

I just returned from a shoot in Chicago. It was a life style shoot for mockups for a campaign. I took the D800, but I really wanted to use my EF lenses, particularly the 50 1.2 and 85 1.2. I rented a 5D3.

As to IQ, looking closely, the D800 wins. However, the 5D3 is solid, fast and awesome. It feels as solid as a 1d series, maybe as solid as a Nikon F5. I believe that it is the better camera body. And it takes the 1.2 EOS lenses. I went to Best Buy under the Willis Tower right after the shoot and bought one. It doesn't FEEL like a 5 series, it fels like a smaller 1d series. I just wish it had the 1ds3 VF magnification.

As others have stated, the D800 is the better choice for landscapes (DR and resolution) while the 5d3 is fantastic for lifestyle, fashion, documentary. I really enjoy the camera.

I mean no offense, but the only people I really want to talk about photography and cameras with are those people who shoot day in day out for clients and have to work on deadlines, work with subjects, maintain computers and gear so everything works all the time. Anything less is a hobby and as such is not as important.

Then the only photographers you'd be speaking to would be commercial photographers, as well as photojournalists who shoot for short-period print media (e.g. newspapers) - neither of whom do their own postprocessing.

Your average wedding photographer spends most of their time postprocessing, not shooting images.

As for landscape photographers, we spend very little time shooting, but lots of time planning shoots, and getting to places to shoot (which can sometimes be several weeks' hike).

But each copy of a large print we make can sell for more than an entire wedding.

i'm co-shooting a moving image project with some stills all this week for a pharmaceutical client, we are using a 5dIII and a D800.we haven't argued or even discussed what is 'better' just got on with the job, both cameras are better than what we used before.the editor has no problem mixing the footage.

It would be helpful if someone were to list all the essential features that are exclusive to each camera, and by essential I mean features excluding personal idiosyncrasies, likes and dislikes related to ergonomics, menu arrangement, button positions, and general handling.

For example, we know that the D800 has higher resolution and better DR to a degree which is significant if the print is large enough and if the scene is of sufficiently high contrast. There's no doubt about that.

We know that the 5D3 has a higher frame rate of 6fps instead the 4fps of the D800. Clearly this is of significance in certain circumstances, shooting fast-moving subjects for example. On the other hand this advantage of the 5D3 is somewhat mitigated by the fact that one can also get 6fps with the D800 by lowering resolution to DX mode, which is 15mp. The D800 in those circumstances then hands over the resolution advantage to ther 5D3, but in doing so the D800 creates an additional advantage, in certain circumstances, which is often attributed to the cropped format, namely the longer reach with a given lens.

For example, let's consider the scenario of two photographers out shooting wildlife, both carrying a 400mm lens but one photogrpher using a 5D3 and the other a D800. A rare species of bird flies by. Both photographers raise their camera in auto-tracking and continuous mode. The 5D3 owner thinks to himself, I'll get better shots than my colleague because I can use 6fps. However, the D800 owner switches to DX mode and effectively gets a 600mm lens as well as 6fps.

Now which camera is likely to produce the sharper and more detailed shots of the bird, viewed at equal magnification on monitor or print?

I've seen it mentioned that the 5D3 LiveView feature is easier to use for manual focussing, but there's so much confusion on this issue it's difficult to know whether the 5D3 has a real advantage in this respect, or whether the problem is due to the D800 simply having an additional feature of 'exposure simulation mode' whereby the light being projected on the D800 LiveView screen is limited by the size of the aperture selected, requiring one to set the lens to maximum aperture for maximum brightness, which is no big deal.

The other source of confusion here is the fact that the D800 allows for greater magnification of the LiveView image, 23x as opposed to 10x for the 5D3, so any comparison of LiveView image clarity should be at equal magnification to avoid confusion.

Nevertheless, the LiveView monitor on my Canon 50D does produce a consistently brighter image than my D800E (I've just compared it as I write this, after setting the D800's monitor brightness to its maximum of +5), so I would have to concede that it is very likely that the 5D3 really does have a more useful LiveView monitor for critical focussing of dark or poorly lit scenes.

Since I don't own a 5D3 and haven't even explored all the features of my D800E yet, there may well be other significant features exclusive to each camera. For example, I believe the range of shutter speeds that can be set when autobracketing ISO is more useful on the D800.

No, they refuse (if indeed it's a matter of "refusal") to innovate in a way which a tiny - but extremely, depressingly, garrulous - subset of the customer base (that miniscule part of the customer base that thinks it needs "amazing" base ISO DR off the camera) has recently decided is the only thing that matters.

I say "off the camera" because any Canon user with half-decent conversion and PP techniques under his belt (and I don't mean multiple exposure HDR techniques here) can make the supposed "superiority" of some Sony sensors in comparison to the Canon alternatives, all but vanish - it's not that hard to get far more effective DR out of Canon files than some here would have us believe is possible.

Despite all of the noise from some quarters about Canon's lack of sensor innovation, I've yet to see the image from a Sony-sensored camera that would be impossible to duplicate with a comparable Canon, and I reckon that Canon is smart enough to recognise hype when it sees it...

For the avoidance of any doubt, I'm saying that for the vast majority of photographers, "best in class" base ISO DR is an irrelevance, and I reckon Canon gets that.

No, they refuse (if indeed it's a matter of "refusal") to innovate in a way which a tiny - but extremely, depressingly, garrulous - subset of the customer base (that miniscule part of the customer base that thinks it needs "amazing" base ISO DR off the camera) has recently decided is the only thing that matters.

I say "off the camera" because any Canon user with half-decent conversion and PP techniques under his belt (and I don't mean multiple exposure HDR techniques here) can make the supposed "superiority" of some Sony sensors in comparison to the Canon alternatives, all but vanish - it's not that hard to get far more effective DR out of Canon files than some here would have us believe is possible.

Despite all of the noise from some quarters about Canon's lack of sensor innovation, I've yet to see the image from a Sony-sensored camera that would be impossible to duplicate with a comparable Canon, and I reckon that Canon is smart enough to recognise hype when it sees it...

For the avoidance of any doubt, I'm saying that for the vast majority of photographers, "best in class" base ISO DR is an irrelevance, and I reckon Canon gets that.

With the two huge, yawning gaps of studio photographers and landscape photographers, including studio photographers who shoot on location using outdoor lights. Wedding, event and news photographers - the 'photojournalist' types - maybe they don't care, and live at ISO 1600 and above. But, for others, the ISO switch is something that exists only in theory...

For the record, you've got it all upside ... who wants to sit around and talk about 'work' with other people from 'work'?

'Work' is not important ... 'hobbies' are. Work is just what you do so you can afford your hobby ... duh.

speak for yourself. i talk about 'work' all the time and about other visual media that influences or inspires that work with other creatives i know/socialise with.not everyone has a working life that only exists to fund the non-working time.

They [Canon] refuse to innovate, to go in the lockstep with the latest technological advances ...

I have previously argued against the Panglossian denials from some Canon enthusiasts of the clear lag in Canon's sensor technology compared to that of Sony/Nikon (and also of Panasonic, and whoever is responsible for the sensor in the Olympus OM-D E-M5). But I will defend Canon against this accusation of not innovating. While Canon has not yet caught up on the advantages of on-sensor parallel A/D conversion, it has just launched a couple of innovations in its new DLSR, the 650D, that are firsts for a DSLR, even though others have done the same in mirrorless systems: - PDAF sensors embedded into the main sensor, as in the Nikon One system sensor - stepper motors moving small internal focussing lens elements for AF (better with CDAF and for silent operation with video), as in recent m43 lenses from both Olympus and Panasonic.

So neither is really pioneering, but both show the willingness and ability to adopt good new ideas from any source, even when they are "NIH" (Not Invented Here). So I do expect Canon to close the gap on sensor design with its next generation, though that might be a few years away.

I will also note that a lot of the most exciting innovations are coming from the bottom up. Maybe the 5D3 defenders are right that even for most professional usage, 35mm format cameras like the 5D3 are good enough in resolution and dynamic range, and I am fairly sure that high ISO, low light performance is now very close to the physical limits of photon shot noise, at least with a Bayer CFA.

If so, then apart from the extreme technical image quality needs of the small cohort for whom the 5D3 IQ is not completely "good enough", where will the most useful innovations take us? I am guessing on two directions:

- eliminating the film-era baggage of a mirror in the viewfinder (including eliminating Sony's transluscent mirror)

- downsizing: bringing that "good enough for most professional photography" image quality to smaller, lighter, more widely affordable "form factors".